SCIENCE ALERT - At some point in evolutionary history, possibly around 400 million years ago, things started having sex.
This adaptational (and sensual) advance introduced multiple benefits by allowing increased gene sharing, thereby helping to prune deleterious mutations and boost general fitness.
Avocado trees also ostensibly like to have sex, but face a problem: Each tree's flowers have both female and male reproductive organs, so they must somehow avoid self-pollination to derive such sexual benefits.
They do this through a clever evolutionary trick called temporal dichogamy, where the flowers of avocado trees (and many other angiosperms) functionally 'switch sexes' each day.
Yet the underlying genetic basis has fascinated and frustrated botanists and growers for over a century.
In a new study, a team of ecologists and agricultural engineers combined field observations with genetic analyses to finally crack the conundrum of avocado sexuality, revealing their dichogamy-defining gene variants.